The lead-up to any major new Marvel movie is a veritable minefield of unfounded rumors, wild speculation, and Tom Holland casually spoiling secrets in late-night interviews. So now that we’re inching closer to Avengers: Doomsday (the MCU’s first Avengers-level crossover since 2019), the rate of news — and fake news — will only accelerate.
Still, recent reports coming out of the movie’s UK production have been a little concerning, to say the least. In press appearances and red carpets, various cast members have revealed how little anyone (including the film’s returning directors Anthony and Joe Russo) seems to know about Doomsday’s inner workings.
The latest Doomsday morsel comes from Scottish actor Alan Cumming, who played the mutant superhero Nightcrawler in X2 and is one of many actors from the 20th Century Fox era of X-Men movies included in the cast of Marvel’s upcoming Avengers extravaganza. Speaking to Gold Derby in a recent interview, Cumming revealed a surprising detail about his role: He’s not sure what characters he’ll be sharing the screen with.
“I did the entire film in isolation,” Cumming said. “Lots of green screen, face replacement. They even gave characters fake names. I don’t know who I was acting with half the time.”
That’s a bit concerning, especially for a massive, live-action movie like Avengers: Doomsday. And it follows a similar reveal from another X-Men actor earlier this summer.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in July, Rebecca Romijn (she plays the shapeshifting villain Mystique in the Fox X-Men movies and will appear in Doomsday) admitted she wasn’t sure if she had wrapped filming yet because the script itself wasn’t finished.
“The script hasn’t — they haven’t finished writing it,” she said. “It’s been very, very fun, and we don’t know yet. They keep everything very close to the vest themselves in an effort to keep everything under wraps.”
So to recap, Avengers: Doomsday is already deep into filming, but the script isn’t finished yet (or, at least, wasn’t finished as of late July) and the production is so secretive that some actors don’t even know what’s happening in the scenes they’re acting in. To be blunt, that doesn’t sound great for a movie that likely needs to make a billion dollars at the box office and revive the flailing MCU — no pressure! But the big question remains: should fans actually be concerned?
Let’s start by circling back to Alan Cumming’s quote. On the surface, Marvel keeping its actors in the dark about their own scenes sounds bad, but it’s actually not that uncommon. The Russo Brothers (who directed Infinity War and Endgame and recently returned to the MCU for Doomsday and its planned follow-up Avengers: Secret Wars) actually did something very similar in the past.
During filming on Avengers: Endgame, they managed to keep the entire cast in the dark about Tony Stark’s death. Then, when it came time to assemble the cast for Iron Man’s funeral, they told everyone they were filming a wedding instead. The fact that the Russo Brotherss managed to get the entire MCU to stand together while looking sad during what was ostensibly a wedding scene is nothing short of a miracle. (It may not be a perfect scene, but it works.)
With that in mind, I’m a little less worried about Alan Cumming not knowing who he’s talking to as Nightcrawler in Avengers: Doomsday. Clearly, the Russo Brothers are pretty good at getting a decent performance out of their actors while keeping certain plot details a secret. And Cumming is a great actor. It’s totally possible that his scenes will still be good enough even with these limitations, right?
As for that whole “we didn’t finish the script yet” issue, again, there’s actually a precedent for Marvel and the Russo Brothers pulling that off. Infinity War and Endgame were filmed back to back, but the script for the latter movie wasn’t finished when production began on the former. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely figured it out along the way, making changes to both films during production.
Despite all that, Infinity War and Endgame feel like a coherent two-part story. Six years later, they’re regarded by many as the pinnacle of modern superhero storytelling and a high point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nothing we’ve learned so far about the production of Doomsday feels any weirder or more unorthodox than what happened on the set of Marvel’s last Avengers movie.
Of course, there are other issues to consider, from checked-out fans who couldn’t keep up with the MCU’s Disney Plus era to concern over the stunt-casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. These are new hurdles that didn’t exist the last time the Russo Brothers directed an Avengers movie, and it’s too soon to tell if they’ll be enough to sink what’s long felt like Hollywood’s sturdiest franchise. But for the time being, I’m not feeling too worried about Avengers: Doomsday. I just hope everyone is OK.